Less budget for luxury labels, more independent brands – the plans of the new Voo Store CEO

Under the leadership of Akcay, who was already active in the company as general manager until mid-2024, the fashion retailer, which is known beyond German borders, will once again concentrate on its former strength: young brands and designer collections that cannot be found everywhere. To achieve this, the new boss is also slashing the budgets for the big fashion houses.

In the interview, he reveals exactly what Akcay’s strategy looks like.

You took over management from founder Yasin Müjdeci at the beginning of the year. Has this also changed the ownership structure?

Not yet, but an adjustment to the ownership structure is planned for April. This is not a radical change. Until now, Yasin and his brother each held 50 percent of the shares; in the future, these will be redistributed between them and the management. Currently only the final conclusion of the business figures for 2025 is pending.

So Müjdeci isn’t just giving up his role?

Yasin will retire completely and plans to move to Paris. The background is that his wife is Commercial Director at Jean-Paul Gaultier and is expecting a baby soon. After 15 years, Yasin felt exhausted and needed a change. But Voo is still his “baby”.

He and his brother Kaan, the future majority owner, specifically brought me back. It was important to him to know that the store was in the hands of people he fully trusted. And I have been responsible for day-to-day business and finances at Voo for many years.

When you appealed, you said that you needed to take certain measures to restore financial stability and profitability. What does that mean exactly?

The current focus is on the restructuring of old liabilities, primarily to the Sport 2000 purchasing association and its house bank, DZ Bank. While the bank has so far shown little accommodation when it comes to payment plans, we are currently working intensively on a solution. As a small, independent store, we almost always find a way with our brand partners, even if there are late payments. It is the bank that has put us under pressure.

Another factor was the sneaker business with a focus on the USA. Since the introduction of new tariffs, this market has collapsed, which has burdened us with planned inventory levels and impacted cash flow. However, thanks to internal restructuring and new investments, we are now very optimistic about the future.

Have you restructured finance and planning to avoid such problems in the future?

In companies like this, the finance department is often neglected. I hired a finance manager, Nikolas Katz, who was previously the financial controller at Zalando. He should ensure that everything works better and more promptly. As an independent retailer, we rely on independent brands. We don’t want them to wait months for payments while they are already suffering from larger partners.

We want to make Voo what it was ten years ago: a destination for smaller, independent labels where the spirit of discovery is at the forefront. Our aim is to bring brands to Berlin that cannot be found anywhere else in the city – young brands that completely impress us with both their branding and their quality.

In a way, this fits with the current trend of looking back to the aesthetic of 2016.

Voo has always stood for independent brands. From 2016 onwards, our portfolio of high-end partners grew steadily, but that is no longer up to date. Although we are sticking with most of these partnerships, we have drastically reduced the budgets because the performance was often no longer in proportion to the required minimum purchase quantities. I’m not willing to commit half of my budget to brands that don’t deliver the desired results commercially.

How did the discussions with these high-end partners go?

January was marked by very tough negotiations. There was often a fear among independent retailers that they would completely lose luxury brands if they did not meet their minimum purchase quantities. But given the current market reality – characterized by declining purchasing power and massive inflation – we can no longer allow these brands to determine our economic existence.

We were very transparent with them. The message was clear: “I can only take 50 to 60 percent of the previous volume, but we would like to continue working together.” We had to be consistent here, as I am no longer willing to invest half of my budget in brands whose performance has significantly deteriorated. Fortunately, we were largely met with understanding.

We will continue to retain challenging pieces to curate the store. But a customer should also be able to find a cool, affordable knitted sweater or pair of jeans for 200 to 300 euros.

How is the shopping budget divided now?

We spend about 25 to 30 percent on luxury brands. The rest goes to emerging or more accessible brands such as Stüssy, Carhartt, Our Legacy or Sunflower.

We’ve found that with accessible brands, we often achieve a 60 percent sell-through rate in a month. So far we have lost valuable sales there because our capital was tied up too much in luxury brands and we were therefore unable to reorder anything from the other brands. We are now redistributing this budget internally.

Creative director Benjamin Patch left the company last year. What about his successor?

Benjamin’s time at Voo only lasted a few months; it was very short. Traditionally, the creative director at Voo was also the head of buying – a key role for our storytelling, as this person has to translate the vision directly into the range for our customers.

Over many years, Herbert Hoffmann and later Thibaud Guyonnet played a key role in shaping Voo’s identity. The creative direction is currently in a transition phase. For the current season, Jesse Hudnutt from New York, who brings many years of experience from Très Bien, is available to advise us on purchasing. In the next few months, however, our primary focus will be on internal restructuring and financial consolidation. As soon as this foundation is in place, we will focus on the creative aspects again

Are there any other major changes in the team?

Our store manager has left the company, but the position will be filled in March. The core team in the areas of purchasing, merchandising, e-commerce and marketing continues to consist of long-term employees.

At the same time, we are drastically simplifying our workflows. We are separating from the highly complex ERP system introduced in 2022 [Anm.d.Red.: Enterprise Resource Planning-System: Softwarelösung für zentrale Geschäftsprozesse]which caused too much manual effort, and move to a leaner warehouse management system. This step frees up capacity in the team to focus more on the physical shopping experience in the store instead of putting all resources into maximum online scaling.

What is the plan for the other segments besides the store – Voo Archive, Deli and Voo Space?

All of our concepts remain the same. We will continue to host guest archive stores in the Archive. The deli will remain as our ‘Cozy Corner’, even if we would like to refresh the interior in order to further increase the time spent in the store.

The biggest change is in Voo Space. We said goodbye to the pure rental model because it didn’t feel like real collaboration. Instead, we are switching to a revenue share model and giving small independent brands that we value a platform. This keeps the area lively and dynamic. This is complemented by cultural impulses such as our monthly book club and exhibitions with independent artists.

What did sales look like in 2025?

The second half of 2024 and 2025 were negative. Although the profits from 2021 to 2023 offset this deficit, I was still surprised by the situation when I returned. We identified two main problems: too much resource commitment in online business and misallocation of the brand budget.

While the stationary store was stable, our e-commerce recorded a decline of 30 to 35 percent over the last year and a half. Total sales fell by 15 percent in 2025. Online retail used to account for 60 to 65 percent of our business, now it is 45 to 50 percent. Our goal is not to bring the online share back to 60 percent; instead, we want to specifically increase the sales share of the stationary business to 60 to 65 percent.